


raison d'être

by excelgesis



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, really it's just so angsty i'm sorry, the flashbacks are happy though?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 12:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14694558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excelgesis/pseuds/excelgesis
Summary: raison d'être - french. reason for being/existing.The destruction of Changbin's entire universe was laid out so logically at 3 AM by someone from a foreign hospital.





	raison d'être

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is largely based on the song "The Crow & The Butterfly" by Shinedown, which you can listen to by clicking [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlNAtRtLTHo)
> 
> You don't have to listen to it before reading, of course, but I would recommend it. I credit this band for ridding me of the writer's block that has been plaguing me for the past 4 months, so uh... thanks, Shinedown? I guess? Thanks for inspiring me to write this sad and angsty shit?
> 
> Anyways, Stray Kids has taken over my life so um here you go.

               The white paint dripped down the backs of Changbin’s hands in thick rivulets, cold and slow and unforgiving. He felt bile rise hot in the back of his throat. The wall in front of him was now half sunshine yellow, half stark white, and the digital clock on the bedside table had 12:54 AM displayed in dull red across its face. He let the paintbrush slip through his shaking fingers and clatter to the hardwood.

 

               _“Felix, what the hell are you doing?”_

_Felix turned and smiled that blinding smile that always made Changbin weak in the knees, though he would never say so. He had a paint roller grasped firmly in both hands, but had somehow managed to leave a streak of liquid sunshine down the side of his own face. “I’m painting, dummy. What does it look like I’m doing?”_

_Changbin gaped. “You can’t paint in an apartment! Dude, we’ll never get our fucking security deposit back, oh my god!”_

_Felix’s smile faltered. “You’re such a downer, Binnie. Just paint over it when I move out. I can’t stand white walls, they depress me.”_

_“What if management comes in for an inspection, or maintenance comes in to fix something? They’re gonna notice that your wall is bright fucking yellow!” Changbin threw his arms into the air._

_Felix raised an eyebrow. “Changbin, how long have you lived here?”_

_Changbin glowered. “Two years.”_

_“And how many times have management or maintenance needed to come into this specific room?”_

_He sighed. “None.”_

_“Exactly.” Felix beamed. “So shut up and let me finish this, will you?”_

_And, if Changbin were being honest with himself, he would do anything to keep that smile on Felix’s face._

Changbin sank to his knees, bracing himself against the wall for support. His hand left an ugly streak in the paint he had haphazardly splashed across the wall, and yellow peeked out through the white, mocking him. Taunting him. Torturing him. A guttural yell tore past his lips and his chest was on fire, his eyes stung, his head ached, the room was spinning and he had already thrown up three times today – yesterday? – surely he wasn’t about to throw up _again_?

               He pressed his forehead to the cool hardwood and tried to remember what normal breathing felt like. Inhale. Exhale. He could do this. He was fine. Inhale. Exhale.

 

               _“It’s all about breathing, I guess,” Felix said, bending forward until his fingertips brushed against the floor. “Helps you relax and find zen or whatever. I don’t know. I never did yoga back in Australia so I don’t know much about it.”_

_Changbin watched from the couch, lips quirked up in amusement, as Felix attempted to execute what he called a “flawless warrior one”. Changbin didn’t know much about yoga himself, but he was pretty sure that the warrior one pose didn’t involve overextending the front leg until you were tumbling sideways onto the floor while shouting curse words, which was exactly what Felix did._

_“How did you learn about yoga again?”_

_Felix brushed off the knees of his sweats and glanced up at Changbin with a pout. His hair was mussed, sticking out in half a dozen different directions, and Changbin felt that he would really and truly give his life for Lee Felix. “Youtube. Youtube has never let me down.”_

_“Never say never, Felix,” Changbin said with a laugh, and Felix only whined._

There was a knocking at the door, muffled as though Changbin were underwater, and maybe he was drowning, suffocating on his own choking loneliness as the empty hole in his chest manifested into a vindictive blackness that would tear its way up his throat. He gasped for air and realized he was choking on tears.

               Inhale. Exhale.

               He scrambled to his feet and shuffled to the front door. The knocking was more insistent now, and he reached for the doorknob with a hesitant hand.

               Chan’s shoulders sagged when Changbin opened the door. “I’ve been knocking for five minutes, mate. I was starting to worry.” His accent always got stronger when he was upset, and his words were stilted and stressed in the wrong places. It reminded Changbin of Felix, and he almost slammed the door in Chan’s face.

               “What do you want? It’s like one in the morning.”

               Chan frowned. “I saw that your lights were still on. I came to check on you.”

               “I’m fine.” The lie was sharp and bitter as acid on Changbin’s tongue.

               “Why are your hands covered in dried paint?”

               Changbin clasped his shaking hands behind his back and grimaced. “Can you please just go?”

               “I’m sorry but I can’t. I’ve got strict orders from the guys.”

               “To do what?” Changbin had meant for it to come out as a menacing hiss, but the tremor in his voice left it sounding broken and small. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

               Chan held up his hands and kept his voice whisper-soft. “I know that. I just need to make sure you’re eating and drinking at least. You need to take care of yourself.”

               “Please,” Changbin gasped. He reached out blindly, his vision suddenly cloudy with tears, and his fingers dug into the soft fabric of Chan’s hoodie. “I need to be alone.” He couldn’t bear seeing Chan’s sympathetic smiles and kind eyes when he could feel every inch of himself shattering into a thousand pieces.

               Chan grimaced. “Bin…”

               “I’m begging you.” It came out as a thin whisper. “You can come back tomorrow. But- but I need this right now. I need this. Please.”

               Chan’s eyebrows knit together and he drew in a shaky breath. “If I come back tomorrow, you’ll let me in?”

               Changbin nodded and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.

               “I’m here for you, yeah?” Chan gripped one of Changbin’s hands in both of his. “We all are. If you need anything at all…”

               Changbin merely shook his head and kept his gaze locked on his bare feet. He ached for the all-encompassing weight of silence on his shoulders and the freedom to tear every room apart piece by piece until the fire in his chest cooled to embers. Chan didn’t need to see him like this. Nobody needed to see him like this.

               Chan shut the door quietly behind him, and Changbin turned the lock with shaking fingers. He managed to make it to the couch before collapsing again, his legs giving way as easily as a sandcastle surrenders to the tide. Tears built steadily along his lashes.

               Inhale. Exhale.

               How long had it been since he had eaten? He wasn’t sure. When had he last slept? His eyelids were sandpaper and all of his muscles screamed in an agonized cacophony. But he pushed it all to the darkest corners of his mind, layering it in cobwebs and shadows until he felt a vast emptiness. He imagined this emptiness – this crushing loneliness – spreading from the tips of his fingers, seeping through the walls and tumbling through the streets of the darkened city until it found its way into the homes and hearts of everyone. He imagined it suffocating all hope and happiness on the planet, eventually reaching out into space to extinguish the sun itself.

               Because if his light, his universe, his reason for breathing had been ripped away from him – didn’t everyone else deserve the same?

               He could feel the sobs now, tearing their way through his chest, and he was probably keeping the neighbors awake but he knew their sleepless night couldn’t compare to his impending sleepless lifetime.

               He slid to the floor and his knees knocked against the coffee table. He glanced up to see that it was littered with things that Felix had left behind: a to-do list with doodles scribbled along the margins, a crumpled brochure for a local dance class, and a thick, hard-bound book with several pages dog-eared for reference. Changbin could feel his stomach sink through the floor.

              

               _The front door swung open with a bang, and Changbin looked up in surprise as Felix ran inside, his hair windswept and his eyes bright. “Binnie, look what I found!”_

_Changbin raised an eyebrow at the massive tome clutched in Felix’s hands._

_“It’s The Chronicles of Narnia, but in Korean! I read the entire series when I was a kid, but reading it in Korean will be like-” he paused as he fumbled for words, something he often did when he got worked up about something. “It will be like, I don’t know, I can’t think of the word. You know, like, seeing it through different eyes! Like I’m a new person!”_

_“A new perspective?” Changbin couldn’t stop a smile from tugging at the corners of his lips. He felt so strange whenever he was around Felix, like he had swallowed liquid sunlight, but it sent warmth from his fingers to his toes and he had to admit it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling._

_“Right!” Felix beamed and settled on the couch next to him. He laid the book across his knees and flipped open the front cover. “And look, on the subway ride home I decided to put this inside.” There, dark against the creamy white page, lay a four-leaf clover pressed between two dirty pieces of tape._

_Changbin blinked. “But, Lix, what if you lose it?” He knew how precious it was to Felix. He had found it in his backyard in Australia when he was thirteen, and he had carried it with him ever since. He swore by its magical good luck powers and gave it credit for nearly every happiness that befell him._

_“I’ll be careful not to lose it,” Felix said with a solemn nod. “I figure I’m going to need a lot of good luck to get through this entire book in Korean. It’s gonna take me ages, but think of all the new words I’ll learn!”_

Changbin pressed a shaking hand against his mouth and reached for the book. He flipped open the front cover and stared at the clover, small and seemingly dwarfed by the blank page. And, against his better judgement, he pressed his fingers to one of the dog-eared pages and turned to it. There were several words and even full sentences highlighted in bright yellow, and scrawled in the margins in Felix’s messy handwriting were the words “ask Changbin what this means” written in English.

               He could taste paint acrid on his tongue as he struggled for breath against his palm. How cruel of the universe, to take Felix away before he could reach the book’s final page. To take him away before he could ask Changbin what those highlighted words meant. Changbin swallowed and grabbed the book in quivering hands before pushing himself to his feet. He could see Felix curled up on the couch with a blanket around his shoulders, poring over the novel laid across his knees with the cap of a highlighter between his teeth. The image brought with it a violent wave of nausea.

               He staggered to the bookshelf and threw the book on the top, pushing it back until the spine made contact with the wall. Getting rid of it would be like denying Felix had ever existed, but keeping it in plain sight would surely drive him straight to insanity. He would let it stay on the top shelf, gathering miniscule piles of dust, until his heart and mind and soul were strong enough for him to take it back down.

               But at this rate, the book would stay up there for the rest of his life.

               Nausea coiled like a venomous snake in the pit of his stomach, and it was then that he realized what he was doing. Painting the walls in Felix’s room, putting his book away on the top shelf… he was chipping away at all the small things that were uniquely Felix, erasing bits and pieces of him in an attempt to water down the pain.

               It wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t working. But he wanted to try and try and try and try until he could finally breathe again. The walls were moving in, creeping closer and closer, and suddenly everything was Felix and he was _drowning._

               He snatched the dance brochure from the coffee table and ripped it to pieces, his whole body shaking with the force of his sobs. He grabbed Felix’s favorite hoodie from the back of the couch and threw it against the wall. It slid to the floor with an unsatisfying rustling noise that made Changbin want to scream, so he did. He shouted until his throat was raw and his chest ached. He cried until his head spun. He tore at his hair and paced around the room until fatigue clawed at his limbs.

               And it wasn’t enough. He felt like an animal trapped in a cage, and he wished he could escape from his own body and exist in a blissful limbo forever. This was too raw, too painful. How could one person be expected to survive this much agony? The air around him felt thin and stale, each breath was a struggle, and maybe this was what Felix had felt before he died—

               And that thought was too much. Changbin had one hand clasped over his mouth as he pushed open the glass door to the balcony and bent over the railing. There was nothing left for his body to expel, so he was left dry heaving and sobbing on the edge of his 9th story apartment as a frigid breeze blew snow against his skin.

 

               _“Have I ever told you how much I love snow?” Felix leaned against the balcony railing, one hand extended toward the sky. He grinned as snowflakes melted on his palm._

_“Probably like 60 times, yeah,” Changbin muttered, pulling his arms to his chest for warmth. It was the first snowfall of the season, and Felix had quite literally pulled Changbin to the balcony to admire it. Changbin had never been fond of the cold but, as was often the case these days, Felix’s smile was enough to make up for any discomfort he felt. It was getting hard to ignore the strong affection blooming in his chest, and he wasn’t sure if he should shy away from it or run toward it headfirst._

_“I rarely got to see it as a kid.” Felix pouted. “Let me enjoy this.”_

_Changbin let out a breathy laugh and moved closer to him, resting his elbows on the railing and placing his chin in his hands. Felix shifted and leaned his head against Changbin’s shoulder. They sat in silence for several moments, watching as the snow danced against the inky backdrop of the night sky._

_“Hey, Lix?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“If your parents asked you to move back home, would you go?”_

_A pause. “No.”_

_Changbin blinked and turned toward him. “You wouldn’t?”_

_Felix lifted his head to look at him. “No, I wouldn’t.”_

_“Why?”_

_“I like you too much to leave.” Felix said it simply, as if it were the most obvious answer in all the world, and Changbin felt his heart somewhere in his throat._

_“What?”_

_He grinned, and Changbin was sure he had been born from the sun itself. “I like you too much, Bin. I could never leave you.” He leaned forward then and his lips were on Changbin’s cheek, so lightly Changbin might have dreamt it, and then Felix was turning and pulling open the door to head back inside._

_There was a ringing in Changbin’s ears, and his heart was a trapped hummingbird fluttering against his ribcage. His palms were slick, his mouth was bone-dry, and he reached out toward Felix with an arm that seemed disconnected from his body. “Wait.” He caught Felix’s sleeve and tugged._

_Felix stumbled several steps backward and turned toward Changbin with eyebrows raised. His lips were parted, snowflakes were caught in his hair, and Changbin was about to lose his nerve._

_“Tell me if I shouldn’t do this,” Changbin said softly. He took a step closer._

_Felix blinked. “Do what?”_

_Changbin moved closer still, until he could feel Felix’s warm breath ghosting over his lips. He could see the individual freckles dotting the bridge of his nose._

_Felix let his eyes slip closed. “Oh,” he breathed. “You definitely should.”_

_Their lips met then, and Felix’s hands were in Changbin’s hair, and Changbin clung to Felix’s hoodie like he was drowning, and it was more than he ever could have asked for._

The snow built up in small drifts along the railing and Changbin’s fingers were stiff with cold. A shudder crawled down his spine and he briefly thought about throwing himself from the balcony and making contact with the unforgiving cement 9 stories down, but he knew he wouldn’t. He was a coward, plain and simple. He always had been.

               He drew in a shaky, painful breath and shuffled back inside, locking the glass door behind him. The pain in his chest radiated to the tips of his fingers and toes, but he couldn’t cry anymore. Sobs still clawed their way through his body, but his eyes were dry and gritty and his head had been filled with a hundred-pound weight.

               Light from the fixture overhead glared off the pictures hung above the kitchen table, as if forcing his eyes to focus on that which would be the most painful. Felix’s dazzling smile, his eyes pushed up into crescents, his hair falling across his forehead – Changbin felt them all like a physical blow to the chest. There they were on the beach in Gangneung, where they had walked hand-in-hand for over two hours. There they were at a dog café, where Felix had insisted they pet every single puppy before they leave so none of them would feel excluded. And there they were on the bullet train in Tokyo, but Changbin’s fondest memory was later that night in a darkened hotel room, when Felix had pressed his body close and told Changbin he loved him for the first time.

               But he would never hear those words from Felix again, and he could feel himself shattering into a hundred million pieces. He grabbed the pictures from the wall and laid them on the kitchen table facedown. Maybe he would wrap them in newspaper later, and shove them away in a closet’s darkened corners to gather cobwebs indefinitely. Or maybe he would rip the photos from their frames and tear them to bits, just to show the universe how much it had wronged him, just to prove a point. But it was all for later, later, later. When it didn’t hurt so much to breathe.

               He sank into the nearest chair and pressed his forehead against the tabletop. His eyes slipped closed against his will, and he was instantly overcome, images flipping across his mind’s eye like a gruesome slideshow intent on destroying him. It was always the same: flames leaping and reaching, dark clouds of acrid smoke sneaking under closed doors, choking and gasping for air.

               There was Felix at the airport, kissing Changbin goodbye and assuring him that he would only be gone for a week like always, just a quick family visit for the New Year.

               There was Changbin’s cellphone ringing at 3 AM from an unknown foreign number, and then a man’s voice, heavily accented Australian English, clipped and professional. A transfer to a Korean translator. And then his world fell apart.

               The destruction of his universe was all laid out so logically: smoke inhalation, a common way to die in apartment fires, especially for those who live on upper levels and have a hard time reaching an exit. Faulty wiring from a recent renovation project had likely sparked the blaze in a lower unit.

               And Changbin had yelled and sobbed and thrown his phone across the room because no no no no no no no, Felix was coming back, Felix would be back to wrap his arms around him and tell him stupid jokes when he felt sad. Felix would be back to finish _The Chronicles of Narnia_ in Korean and keep his four-leaf clover in his jeans pocket. Felix would be back to grow old with him. Felix would be back.

               And part of Changbin still expected it. He still turned his bleary eyes toward the door and waited for it to open. He still glanced at his phone and waited for a message, waited for a call.

 

               _“I love you,” Felix said with a soft smile. He had one hand clasped around the handle of his suitcase, his back turned toward the line snaking through airport security._

_“I love you more,” Changbin replied, grasping at Felix’s free hand with both of his own._

_Felix beamed. “Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone, Binnie.”_

_“You know I will.”_

_Felix shook his head and leaned down to press a kiss against Changbin’s forehead. “I’ll be back before you know it.”_

_And he was gone, lost in the masses, a brilliant butterfly masked by a murder of crows._


End file.
